TRANSACTIONS OP ALTON HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 301 



few of these, he said, would do more good in the strawberry beds than 

 fifty dollars' worth of Captain Stewart's salt. He said, if friend Huggins 

 were here he would like to put that bug against some of his best birds. 

 Jonathan Huggins read the following : 



FALL WEB-WORM. 



The caterpillars known as the fall web-worms have already made their 

 appearance on our quince bushes, pear trees, and on some other trees, 

 such as the apple tree and mulberry. They are not confined to these 

 particular trees, but are found also, later in the season, on other varieties, 

 and the bushes and shrubs of our gardens, making them look, as the 

 season advances, very unsightly, to say nothing of the injury done the tree 

 or bush. Their webs, at first small, are generally .enlarged until they 

 sometimes extend over entire branches, in the latter part of summer. 



The eggs, from which the caterpillars proceed, are laid by the parent 

 moth in a cluster upon a leaf, near the extremity of a branch. They 

 hatch in this latitude from early in June to late in August — some broods 

 early, some late, and not about the same time, as is the case with the 

 orchard tent-caterpillar. The young caterpillars immediately begin to 

 provide a shelter for themselves by covering the upper side of the leaf 

 with a web. They feed in company beneath this web, devouring only 

 the upper skin and pulpy portion of the leaf, leaving the veins and lower 

 skin untouched. 



As they increase in size they enlarge their web, carrying it over the 

 next leaves, eating as before, and thus continue, till finally the web 

 covers a large portion of the branch with its dry, brown and filmy 

 foliage, reduced to this unseemly condition by these pests. 



These caterpillars, when grown, are about one inch in length. 

 Their bodies are thinly clothed with hairs of a grayish color, inter- 

 mingled with a few which are black ; general color of body, greenish 

 yellow, dotted with black ; a bright yellow stripe on each side, and broad 

 blackish stripe along the back ; head and feet black. 



On arriving at full size, or late in summer, they leave the trees and 

 wander about, eating such plants as fall in their way, till they have found 

 suitable places of concealment, where they make their cocoons, composed 

 of a slight mesh of silk. They remain in the cocoons in the chrysalis 

 state through the winter, and are transformed to moths early in the 

 summer season. 



The time to exterminate these destructive insects (fall web-worm, or 

 Hyphantria textor) is when they are just beginning to make their webs on 

 the trees or bushes. So soon as they begin to appftar on the branches 

 they should be stripped off with the leaves and crushed under foot. This 

 should be done all at once, as, if you are delicate about it, the caterpillars 

 will wriggle out of the nest on being disturbed, and be scattered over the 

 ground, only to renew their work on being left to themselves. We must 

 not confound this insect with other caterpillars. We have the orchard 

 tent-caterpillar and the forest tent-caterpillar. 



